FAQ

To help friends and family share private announcements, photos, and videos with confidence in who will see them.

Large social networks are excellent at some things Famicus does not try to be—for example:

• Meeting new people and chatting broadly.
• Discovering news, memes, and entertaining videos.
• Promoting ideas to friends—and often to friends of friends.

The harder part, for many people, is the “who will see this?” question when sharing something personal. A photo of a child, a family update, or a private moment can reach wider circles than you might expect through friends-of-friends, resharing, or default visibility. You can tighten settings on those platforms if you know how; Famicus is built around small, explicit connections from the start.

Under typical terms of service, platforms may also use uploaded content in ways users do not always read—for example training systems or improving ads. Famicus is not a replacement for Facebook or similar services. It is a narrow alternative for sharing text, pictures, and video with people you choose, without unknown distribution.

Amicus is Latin for “friend.” The leading f stands for family—friends and family together.

Text announcements, pictures of life events, and videos of life events. Nothing else.

Only people you have directly connected with. Friends of friends do not see those events.

No. Connection lists are private—not visible to others, even to your other connections.

Each person chooses how long old posts should be kept: never delete, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, 7 years, or 10 years. Bounded options limit risk and support a “not forever” approach, while longer options let people keep memories available. When a selected retention period is reached, old content is permanently deleted.

The meaningful content is removed permanently. We may retain minimal date-stamped references (such as IDs or hashes) for audit and operations, but not the text, images, or videos themselves.

To discourage organizational or throwaway accounts and keep the network person-to-person, with clear accountability.

It keeps the network personal and a poor fit for mass marketing, and it reinforces a friends-and-family scope. Learn more: Dunbar's number (Wikipedia).

An invite is a single-use encoded URL. You send it yourself—email, Signal, or any channel you choose. Famicus does not deliver invites for you. There are no bulk or “invite everyone” codes.

We may someday allow inviting two friends to connect with each other; we are still working through the privacy implications. We will not push or nag people to do that.

Personal moments you share with family and friends. Not in scope: demographics, stats, memes, generic news, non-personal posts, or employer-wide announcements (unless a coworker is already your direct connection). Organization- or institution-wide sharing is not the focus.

We might eventually allow very limited organizational announcements only—strictly voluntary for users, no sharing of user data with the organization, no threaded conversations, and no organization feed or wall like personal walls. Nothing like that exists today.

You keep full copyright in what you post. Posting someone else’s content without permission violates our terms.

In most cases, yes—pages are meant to be saveable or printable for personal reference, aside from a few practical exceptions (such as large media viewers).

Discussion happens on an event, among people who can see that event—usually the poster’s connections. That is the main situation where you might see input from someone who is not your direct connection: you see a short name only, not their full profile or how they connect to others.

We intend the core service to stay free if we can sustain it.

Right now it is not user-funded. Over time we hope to offer optional paid services—for example yearly photo or event albums that help preserve memories in printable or durable form—and possibly voluntary support (such as Patreon). There will be no advertising.

It aligns with our privacy-first, human-scale goals. We do not run ads, including promotional or “friendly” placements.

As the service accepts money, we plan to publish a simple monthly summary of where support comes from. There is nothing to report yet.

Only with people you choose to share with through the product. We do not sell or hand your content to unrelated companies. We disclose information to government authorities when the law requires it (see the next answer). Staff may see data when maintaining systems; like many industries (for example telecom or network operations), they are expected to treat that access as confidential.

Yes. Famicus is a U.S. company operating in Missouri and incorporated in Delaware. Federal and state law apply, including lawful requests such as subpoenas, which can require disclosure despite our general practices.

The value and sensitivity of shared information change over time; letting each person choose a retention period is clearer than assuming one answer for everyone. Your friends and family can still save or print what matters to them. We expect optional album-style products to help preserve highlights in durable form—always with people you trust.